Ecstatic Silence
by MessengerOfDreams
Summary: Of languages we cannot speak, only feel, because three words are so hard to say.


**A/N: Welcome to my stories? I think? I dunno. We'll find out.**

**Wanted to do a few short one-offs for SSB pairs that I've always adored, from my beginnings to my current state. It's been four years since I started, consider it a subtle, infrequent anniversary project. **

**Obviously this first pair is my first SSB OTP, Sheik/Luigi. I don't know why I loved these two so much. Both softspoken with passion below the surface. Similar qualities with different reasoning. Just sort of worked somehow.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing, regret nothing, and let them forget nothing.**

I have never once heard you tell me that you loved me, but I have felt it.

It's endearing how shy you are at first, like this is your first time at the dance, like you've never rushed in like an unstoppable river. I often wonder if you are fragile or if you fear that I am. No, your unspoken love has made me stronger, and it has heightened my defenses for every bit as much as it has torn them down.

I feel it through my veins, coursing like electricity through every molecule. When you talk to me in ways you don't talk to others, I feel it. You are often so silent in the company of others, cooped inside your attire like a turtle in its shell. People have called you a shadow, a runner-up, but you were never one for the spotlight. You open up to me in ways I did not know a person could open up to others. I've always been a listener; I hear the message the wind carries through leaves on the vine. I hear the heralds of rain kamikaze from the sky, kissing the surface of the Earth with the breath of life. I hear your words escape your chest like a caged animal desperate to claw its way out. Your words are breathless, enthusiastic, like an arrow slicing through the air.

"Can you imagine all of the songs being written, all of the stories being told, all of the lives being built at this very moment?" you once told me as we walked through empty fields, far away from where we knew society laid in wait. I smiled, because I knew something was being built between us, words both strong and empty creating our own society. I could hear new songs in my head, feel the words write our story beneath our feet. We were past the formal greetings and the precocious behavior, and now your words were unstoppable.

Sometimes I wonder why you try and play it safe around me. I've already fallen in more than I care to admit. You've already torn down almost every wall that kept us at a distance before I could even recognize how to do it. The way you hold me, an arm around my waist and a hand cradling my neck, running through my hair and weaving it into your skin, you give yourself to me as much as I let myself fade into you. You kiss me like you expect me to disappear in your grasp, swaying uncontrollably to stealing every moment you can and fearing any further action will take further moments away from you. Scared, desperate, passionate, cautious. You are uninhibited, and terrified because of it.

I have never been one to question my lot in life. I hear the nighttime air communicate to the stars because I let the breeze it speaks through carry me. I cannot plan for any future day in my life, because I know they are scant and sacred, and I fear letting one of them go to waste as much as you fear never having them in the first place.

Sometimes I wonder if you can read the signs, if I communicate my feelings as strongly as you can even if those three words never come up. The feelings I have to communicate to you never coalesce into words. Every time I try, they shatter, failing to craft words in the undefinable language that communicates inside me in a way that no natural force could ever do. I wonder if you cannot read what I have to say, the way I throw myself into every kiss, every touch from slight to earthshaking, falling so hard I nearly break you; the way I communicate everything I've been given from the quiet world that I call my home, relaying the messages nature has blessed me with when I could rely on no other human; the way even in our quietest moments I grasp your hand, if only to say, I am here, I will not leave, I love you, please tell me I am not alone, because I'm too afraid to admit that I'm just as terrified of losing you as you seem to be of losing me.

That's the mess of it all, isn't it? I do not fear returning to a solitary life- I know the forces of nature that spin this world around will take care of me, and I will be okay- but I fear losing you, scaring you away, carrying scars I did not know could tear my flesh like invisible needles, hitting sharply yet softly at once to the point that I would not notice my wounds until my blood pours out of every tiny hole like sunlight through tree leaves. I am strong enough to stand on my own, but that isn't what I fear; I fear losing this unique, unspoken joy I've found in your company, the idea of taking someone on the journeys I have retraced, of not being able to share this wondrous world with anyone, not being able to impart the joy of being alive with anyone else.

I've been accused of being mysterious, in masquerade garb in an empty world, hiding from others. My journey has always been that of my people- of stealth, of nuance, and of the deep love for life- not just mine, but others. I've never known how to handle any of that other than to live and feel it so intensely that it's a wonder that it hasn't become visible yet.

Right now, we are under the stars, under a tree, sheltered yet open at once. I wish it would rain, because it would justify the chills down my spine. The nighttime air caresses us as we maintain this ecstatic silence, backs against the tree trunks, exposed against the world, time, and all of the glory and gore it's left us, so much more to say.

"Does the world ever feel too big for you?" you ask.

"_There's too much space for things to fall apart," you mean._

"I feel like it's not big enough," I say.

"_If we stay where we are, I may go mad," I mean._

You clasp my hand, terrified I'll let go. I squeeze it tighter, desperate to speak this language that I would give this entire planet I love just to vocalize. We remain stuck in the middle; too scared to act, both terrified of losing the same and different things. I try and understand it as your way of telling me you love me, fearing that I might be the only one whose heart is on the line. I am you more than you realize, and you are me more than you fear.

In that way, we are perfect for each other, two silent people incapable of vocalizing a simply abstract language that has consumed all of our thoughts.

**Well, that was decent.**

**I've got a fun one lined up next. I think it'll be the weirdest pairing this section has ever fucking seen. 3**

**~MoD **


End file.
